Artists
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Björk *XI 21 1965 — The Life You Give
Björk, born Björk Gudmundsdottir, November 21, 1965, in Reykjavík, Iceland, is the singer-songwriter and actress best known for her solo work covering a wide variety of music styles. Integrating electronic and organic sounds, her music frequently explored the relationship between nature and technology. Björk recorded her first solo album, a collection of cover versions of…
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Meredith Monk *XI 20 1942 — The Life You Give
Meredith Monk, born Meredith Jane Monk, November 20, 1942, New York City, New York, U.S.A., is the performance artist, a pioneer in the avant-garde, whose work skillfully integrated diverse performance disciplines and media. Monk studied piano and eurythmics from an early age. She earned a B.A. in 1964 from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York.…
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Carl Maria von Weber *XI 18 1786 — The Life You Give
Carl Maria von Weber, born Nov. 18, 1786, in Eutin, Holstein, Germany, is the composer and opera director during the transition from Classical to Romantic music, noted especially for his operas Der Freischütz (1821; The Freeshooter, or, more colloquially, The Magic Marksman), Euryanthe (1823), and Oberon (1826). Der Freischütz, the most immediately and widely popular…
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Martin Scorsese *XI 17 1942 — The Life You Give
Martin Scorsese, born Martin Marcantonio Luciano Scorsese, on November 17, 1942, in Queens, New York, U.S.A., is the filmmaker known for his harsh, often violent depictions of American culture. From the 1970s Scorsese created a body of work that was ambitious, bold, and brilliant. But even his most acclaimed films are demanding, sometimes unpleasantly intense…
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Paul Hindemith *XI 16 1895 — The Life You Give
Paul Hindemith, born November 16, 1895, in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is the one of the principal German composers of the first half of the 20th century and a leading musical theorist. He sought to revitalize tonality—the traditional harmonic system that was being challenged by many other composers—and also pioneered in the writing…
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Aaron Copland *XI 14 1900 — The Life You Give
Aaron Copland, born November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A., is the composer who achieved a distinctive musical characterization of American themes in an expressive modern style. Copland, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born in New York City and attended public schools there. An older sister taught him to play the piano, and…
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Fanny Mendelssohn *XI 14 1805 — The Life You Give
Fanny Mendelssohn, born Fanny (Cäcilie) Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy, married name Fanny Hensel), on November 14, 1805, Hamburg [Germany], is the pianist and composer, the eldest sister and confidante of the composer Felix Mendelssohn. Fanny is said to have been as talented musically as her brother, and the two children were given the same music teachers. Felix…
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Auguste Rodin *XI 12 1840 — The Life You Give
Auguste Rodin, born November 12, 1840, in Paris, France, is the sculptor of sumptuous bronze and marble figures, considered by some critics to be the greatest portraitist in the history of sculpture. His The Gates of Hell, commissioned in 1880 for the future Museum of the Decorative Arts in Paris, remained unfinished at his death…
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Auguste Rodin, in words
“In front of the model, I work with the same desire to copy the truth as if I were making a portrait; I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into her; she leads me. I can work only from a model. The sight of the human form fortifies and nourishes me.” “The artist is…
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Keith Emerson *XI 2 1944 — The Life You Give
Throughout his career with the Nice, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and as a solo artist, Keith Emerson proved himself perhaps the greatest, most technically accomplished keyboardist in rock history. For all his reputation as an innovator and master of classically influenced rock, Emerson began his career playing R&B; the Nice got their first big break…
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Omara Portuondo! *X 29 1930 — The Life You Give
Omara Portuondo, born October 29 1930 in Havana, Cuba, is a singer whose career has spanned over half a century. Portuondo was born one of three sisters; her mother came from a wealthy Spanish family, and had created a scandal by running off with and marrying a black professional baseball player. Omara started her career…
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Francis Bacon *X 28 1909 — The Life You Give
Francis Bacon, born October 28, 1909, Dublin, Ireland, is the painter whose powerful, predominantly figural images express isolation, brutality, and terror. The son of a racehorse trainer, Bacon was educated mostly by private tutors at home until his parents banished him at age 16, allegedly for pursuing his homosexual leanings. Self-taught as an artist, he…
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Sylvia Plath *X 27 1932 — The Life You Give
Sylvia Plath (born October 27, 1932, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died February 11, 1963, London, England) was an American poet whose best-known works, such as the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar, starkly express a sense of alienation and self-destruction closely tied to her personal experiences and, by extension, the situation of…
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Conlon Nancarrow *X 27 1912 — The Life You Give
Conlon Nancarrow was an iconoclastic American composer who wrote in an utterly new way using new instrumental resources. While isolated from the main currents of music, he was virtually ignored by the public and his colleagues until the 1970s. In the 1980s composer György Ligeti said Nancarrow was writing “the best music by any living…
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Luciano Berio *X 24 1925 — The Life You Give
Luciano Berio, born October 24, 1925, in Oneglia, Italy, is the musician, whose success as theorist, conductor, composer, and teacher placed him among the leading representatives of the musical avant-garde. His style is notable for combining lyric and expressive musical qualities with the most advanced techniques of electronic and aleatory music. Berio studied composing and…
Sila Blume 